As a device which produces printed circuit boards on which multiple components are mounted, there is a solder printer, a component mounting machine, a reflow furnace, a printed circuit board tester, and the like, and these are often linked to construct a printed circuit board production line. Of these, the component mounting machine is generally provided with a board conveyance device, a component supply device, and a component transfer device. The board conveyance device performs the carrying-in, carrying-out, and the positioning of the printed circuit board. The component supply device sequentially supplies components of a plurality of component types to a predetermined supply position. A feeder system component supply device is a representative example of the component supply device. The feeder system component supply device is generally equipped with a plurality of tape feeders in a detachable manner. Each tape feeder holds a carrier tape in which a plurality of components are stored at an equal pitch, and sequentially supplies the components to the supply position. The component transfer device sucks to the component from the supply position of the component supply device using a negative pressure and mounts the component on a positioned printed circuit board.
Regarding the feeder system component supply device described above, the specifications such as the width dimension of the carrier tape and the inter-component pitch dimension are defined in levels by the JIS standard and the like based on the size and the like of the component. Although it is preferable that the feed amount by which the tape feeder intermittently feeds the carrier tape ideally matches the pitch dimension, these do not necessarily strictly match every time and may fluctuate. The fluctuation of the feed amount is directly linked to the positional precision of the supply position at which the components are actually transferred. The positional precision of the supply position of the tape feeder is generally managed such that a suction nozzle of the component transfer device can stably suck the component.
However, individual differences in the positional precision of the tape feeders cannot be avoided, even if the same type of tape feeder which uses the same specification of carrier tape is used. In addition, it is conceivable that the positional precision decreases with the passage of time due to the wearing or the like of the drive sections caused by operation over many years. The decrease in the positional precision leads to a suction fault in which the suction nozzle cannot suck the component. Decreases in the production efficiency and the like caused by the wasting of components and a recovery operation occur due to the suction faults. Due to tape feeders with reduced positional precision also being present, the operational efficiency of the set-up work and the like is reduced, and the production efficiency is further reduced.
The applicant of the present application has disclosed a maintenance method which handles this reduction in the positional precision of the tape feeder in PTL 1. The maintenance method of the electronic circuit component mounting machine of PTL 1 intensively performs maintenance on the constituent elements of a plurality of electronic circuit component mounting machines which are installed in a plurality of factories. The constituent elements include a component feeder (the tape feeder), and, for example, a plurality of electronic circuit component mounting machines is monitored intensively in real time by a single monitoring system. Accordingly, it is possible to intensively perform the maintenance of the component feeder for which the necessity to perform maintenance arises easily due to frequent operation causing great degradation and wearing, there being many component feeders of many types. Although spare component feeders are necessary in order to avoid a reduction in the availability factor of the electronic circuit component mounting machine, it is possible to reduce the number of spares to be kept.